Flash was all the rage until people started browsing more on mobile. Not only was Flash “not out of favor” when the iPhone was introduced, it was a big talking point that Flash didn’t run on iPhones and later iPads. It was a marketing point that Android could run Flash (badly) until everyone just gave up.
There were definitely a lot of flash sites around back in the day. But anyway, flash support/popularity had nothing to do with IE losing control of setting browser standards because IE never set browser standards in the first place - in fact it quite often flouted them.
I’m saying that IE and Flash’s popularity didn’t decline because of government intervention - the tool that seems to be the go to of HN posters anytime there is something that they don’t like - even though what ended IE and Flash’s popularity on the web wasn’t the government.
Well being that I was talking about IE pre-2010 I guess the next step would be to reminisce... maybe hope not to repeat the mistakes of the past? What do you suggest?